


Destroying Angel

by Calleva



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Drunkenness, Gen, Subterfuge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-11 04:28:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20540114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calleva/pseuds/Calleva
Summary: The four Musketeers are weary, each has woman problems, and none feels especially enthusiastic about their new challenge: to expose the Cardinal and his accomplice for their plan to assassinate Queen Anne.This is the missing scene from The Musketeers (2014) between Episodes 9 and 10 of Season One.In which a terrible co-incidence might be used for good - as long as no one gets too angry about the revelation.Written for the Facebook group 'The Musketeers, We are the Garrison'.





	Destroying Angel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cynthia Boyd](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Cynthia+Boyd).

_Don't want to touch you but you're under my skin _  
_I wanna kiss you but your lips are venomous, poison._  
_ You're poison, running through my veins_  
_ You're poison_  
[Alice Cooper]

"Well that was a close-run thing!"

The other three Musketeers nodded in agreement with Porthos just as the tavern girl brought four mugs of ale to their table. They had chosen a spot in the corner where they could be away from eyes and ears. But even in the subdued light, Aramis noticed the smooth skin on the girl's arm. No blemishes, like the skin on her face. She must be very young; few people were lucky enough to maintain that perfection long into adulthood. Only nobility could do that, with their softer lifestyle. He thought of the Queen and her porcelain complexion, and a surge of longing washed through him.

"I cannot believe you slept with the Queen!" Hissed Athos. The trouble with living and working so closely with others was that they learned to read your mind. Athos had seen the expression on his face. Athos could be so self-righteous sometimes, Aramis thought. Did Athos really have no vices of his own, aside from his moodiness?

Athos was tetchy now, cradling his mug of ale and staring down into it. He hadn't drunk anything. Was Aramis' indiscretion really bothering him that much? Aramis took a long pull on his ale. He realised how tired they all were. The Queen had been saved from assassination, it had been a tough task, and they were only men after all - what they all really needed was a rest. Maybe that would be possible once the loose ends were tied up. Treville wanted them to finish this for good by exposing the true plotters - who didn't include Count Mellendorf.

"Mellendorf can't have a very high opinion of French hospitality." Aramis mused.  
"He didn't know what he was lettin' himself in for," Porthos responded, "'e thought he was finding a suitable match for 'is daughter, and instead 'e's in the Bastille, and the only 'unting he'll be doing is for lice and rats."  
"Which is why Treville has asked us to get to the bottom of this." d'Artagnan reasoned.  
"It has the Cardinal's fingers all over it." Athos murmured and his shoulders sagged. He still hadn't touched his ale. It wasn't just the Cardinal who was behind this. The whole plan was covered with prints from the slender, milk-white fingers of his wife. Damn her!

All he wanted to do was forget her, put her from his mind as he'd cast her from his life. He could almost smell her jasmine perfume. He had smelled it in his mind even as he had watched his ancestral home burn. There was a deadly mushroom called the Destroying Angel. That was what she was. She destroyed everything she touched. As she had poised to cut his throat, with the flames all around them, he had seen her last shards of humanity used up as she spared his life. That wasn't so merciful - she would forever haunt him, in dreams, memory and life.

He had hoped never to mention her again, and certainly not to his closest comrades. D'Artagnan had been at the burning house, but Athos was quite sure that neither of the other two had any inkling that he had a wife, much less that she was an assassin. Now should he broach this sober, or not sober?

He raised his tankard and drank the ale in one long gulp. "More ale is needed. No, make that a bottle of wine. Two bottles."  
Aramis looked guardedly at him; surely that business with Anne need never be known? What possible harm could it have done? With a fool like Louis for a husband, no wonder Anne was emotionally and physically starved! Athos was beginning, just a little bit, to annoy him.

"I'm sorry I don't come up to your high standards," He muttered. Athos' reaction was immediate  
"What? You think this is about you? Yes, I think you were a complete and utter fool - but I don't lose sleep over it." His greeny-gray eyes stared directly into Aramis' own brown ones.

He had started on the wine and drunk almost half a bottle. Wine was wonderfully medicinal, it numbed the pain. Of course he would need to drink considerably more but the tavern had a well-stocked cellar and it wouldn't be difficult to sink enough to be past caring.

He really hoped he'd seen the last of her. It had once cost all he had to spurn her. He had been the compassionate one, to let her hang for her crimes before she could further damn her soul by more villainy. Born a penniless village girl she had used her beauty like a weapon and now she was the favourite ally and hired blade of the most powerful man in France. And all the Musketeers had to do was expose the Cardinal and her.

Simple, really.

\----

"We need to draw out the true conspirators, and I suggest we focus on the assassin." Athos began, "d'Artagnan smelt jasmine perfume at the money lender's. I am acquainted with this person, she is one of the most evil, ruthless women alive."  
"A woman?" Porthos noted, "Them maybe it's a job for Aramis. Go find her and use your charms..."  
Athos breathed in deeply through his nose. "You underestimate her completely. She's the most dangerous person I know. What we need, perhaps, is for one of us to have done something to get himself into some kind of disgrace - and have her stalk him. Let her think he's easy prey. If she thinks he has a grudge, she will play on it, knowing that her employer will reward her highly for destroying the Musketeers."  
"Surely it would be easier for her to wait in a dark alley and plunge a dagger into each of us, at various times?" Porthos suggested.  
"She is certainly capable of that, but she prefers to let others do her dirty work. Her trick is to ensnare a man - it's usually a man - and use the poor dupe to her own ends. Unfortunately it never goes well for the dupe, but once he's served his purpose, he's no more use to her."  
"And how would you be knowing all this?" Porthos fingered the metal studs on his leather tankard, thinking. He wasn't immune to the charms of a woman, heaven knew - hadn't he seen the candlemaker's widow in the street only two days ago and been plunged into a fit of gloom? It had taken all he had not to run after her, forswear his soldiering career and fall at her feet. Memory of her caresses still burned strong. Alice may now be free of the candlemaker, but she had seemed so alone, so fragile. The woman Athos described was nothing like anyone Porthos knew. Flea had a heart, she may have become hardened by life, but she wasn't evil.  
"I know all this," Athos told him, "because she happens to be my wife. La Comtesse de la Fere, though I believe she prefers Milady de Winter. She hides behind a number of names as well as mine ."  
And he downed the rest of the second bottle of wine.

d'Artagnan felt himself go suddenly cold. With a feeling of dread, he realised that he knew La Comtesse de la Fere rather well. Extremely well. At the tavern in Meung where he'd met her, she'd gone by the other name. How was he to know that he'd bedded his comrade's wife?

Seeing Athos now, brooding over his second bottle of wine, made him realise how much we don't see in those we think we know. What would happen if he revealed what he had only now discovered? It was difficult to know how Athos would take it: with anger and shouting, or anger and shouting and violence? Indifference was unlikely. As a rule, Athos wasn't one for violent rages; his anger was more of a freezing contempt with a venomously sarcastic tongue, and he could brood for a very long time. But this time d'Artagnan figured that there may be more action than words. It wouldn't be reasonable, he had bedded Milady only the one time, and how was he to know she was the wife of one of them? And she had initiated it. But Athos might not bother to find all this out. One of the best swordsmen in France might just whip out his rapier instead.

Damn.

He really needed Constance, he could do with her advice, now. Even if she forgot him, he could not forget her. He cringed at the thought of her knowing what happened in Meung, but at the same time he couldn't imagine her raving at him. She was too sensible and wise - it had been before he'd met her, when he was still rubbing the country mud from his boots. She'd be annoyed for a moment - and, yes, jealous, but her good sense would prevail. Or would have. When she still said she loved him.

Even now he couldn't quite believe that she had never loved him. As a married woman she wasn't supposed to give her heart to anyone but her husband, and even though she didn't love Bonacieux, d'Artagnan suspected that either Constance could not stand the secrecy of their affair any longer, or she was thinking of what was best for him, to find a woman free to love him. Perhaps that skulking toad of a husband had something to do with it? There were all sorts of reasons why Constance could have been lying, but he had no proof of any of them.

____

Well, thought Aramis, that would certainly explain all the brooding.  
"Are you quite sure it's her?" d'Artagnan asked. Athos turned a bloodshot, weary eye on him.  
"It has to be. The jasmine perfume you smelt, it's hers."

Athos fell silent, remembering. Once, she had come to him wearing just her perfume, he had said she was overdressed in anything more. He had buried his face against her silken neck, feeling her soft hair around his face, and inhaled. She smelt of flowers and that sweet, musky woman-smell that drove him mad with desire. Love and hate - it wasn't true they were opposite. They were connected too closely. He hated everything about her, and had loved her to distraction - the memory of it burned his soul. Madness lay ahead for anyone who loved that women too much. He started on the third bottle of wine. Were the others really sticking to ale? How much had he drunk?

d'Artagnan, fortified with ale, decided that if there was to be an outcast Musketeer, it might as well be him. To convince Milady and the Cardinal, they needed something which would cause inspirational acting. His sudden revelation would be the best way of arousing strong feelings.  
"Now we need a traitor, it might as well be me..." he began.  
"You're too young, you don't have anything we can realistically pin on you." Murmured Athos. "You're barely a man, mate." Porthos interjected. "It should be Aramis. He's the one the ladies love most."  
"Hold on a moment!" d'Artagnan didn't like what Porthos had said about his manliness. "I'm a Musketeer, I killed LaBarge. What's that about not being man enough?"  
"'s not what I said. Look, it's very noble of you to offer, and of course you are....."  
"I slept with Athos' wife. Me. We spent the night together in Meung. Only up to now I never realised who she was."

Six eyes were upon him now and that corner or the tavern had gone quiet.  
"Porthos is right. This is clearly a job for Aramis. No one disputes your skill with a sword, but this is about more than fighting." Athos noted wearily.  
"Didn't you listen?" d'Artagnan, bold with pride, suddenly needed them to understand that he was not a boy, "I said I shagged her; we slept together without the sleeping. Only I woke up to find her gone and this guy that she was travelling with was dead from a stab wound. The knife had been left by my pillow to make it look like I did it..... "

Athos' expression changed slowly from drunken cynicism to white-faced shock. Slowly, he got to his feet, clutching the edge of the table for balance. His head started to clear. He hadn't believed d'Artagnan's claims right until the story about the dead man and the murder weapon.  
"Look, I'm sorry - I had no idea about her connection with you. She was travelling with a Spanish gentleman, she said he was a terrible bore..... but even so, killing him was a bit excessive, wasn't it?"  
"He was probably a very bad lover as well," Athos murmured dully, "or she'd not have bothered with you."  
"I'm sorry,"  
"Stop apologising. If I wasn't so drunk I would have to kill you. As it is I think I'll have another bottle of wine".  
"Excellent!" Porthos quaffed his ale and beamed up at Athos, the white froth on his moustache making him look faintly ridiculous. And then the room seemed to turn upside down and only Athos was the right way up - in any case he seemed to be seeing a good number of men with white froth on their top lip.... He swayed and sat down heavily, slumping forward, his head on his arms.  
"What is excellent about that?" Aramis asked sourly. Porthos' smile got wider,  
"We've got a reason to gang up on d'Artagnan. For messing with Athos' old lady. And it will flush her out because we know she has a fancy to our young friend here. Exshellent!" He rubbed his face and looked quizzically at his tankard. "Hmm, strong stuff, this..."  
"Well at least you can still think sensibly," Aramis looked approvingly at Porthos who gave his low, gurgling laugh.


End file.
